Tag Archives: cook

Last night, I made a pretty darn spectacular grilled cheese. I definitely impressed myself. Now, I love grilled cheese anyway, but I really outdid myself this time–probably because I added tomato, and you know how much I love tomato. So I had to have it again for lunch today.

And here’s how we roll:Sauté the onion and garlic in a small skillet until golden-brown. While that cooks, load up the bread with cheese (one slice of cheese on each slice of bread), tomato, pepper, oregano and basil. Once the garlic and onion have finished cooking, let them cool. Then add them to the sandwich as well. Close the sandwich, then cook each side in the skillet over butter or oil until golden brown (the Hemp bread takes a little longer than most other types of bread I’ve used, so you’ll have to be patient). Now, take a bite and enjoy!

If you tried this, let me know what you think! Did you use other ingredients? Should I have added anything else? (As always, if you have trouble leaving a comment, be sure to let me know.)

I’m bored with food. I eat the same things again and again, and it has begun to ruin my relationship with food.

I don’t have time to cook, so I rarely cook. When I do, it’s grilled chicken or fish. I was totally in love with grilled chicken and fish six months ago. Now, I practically shove it down my own throat to make myself eat it. I don’t even really enjoy being in the kitchen anymore. That is a depressing thought.

For lunch, I usually grab Subway, Boar’s Head or Chick-Fil-A on campus before hopping a bus (where I eat my lunch) to my car so I can go to work.

I may have left out something important: I don’t eat pork or red meat; if it oinks or moos, I won’t eat it. My family tree is full of heart disease, and I’m doing my best to avoid it. For me, avoiding a future of hypertension and heart surgery means I cut out foods high in fat and sodium. I call myself a pescepoultritarian (I keep waiting to bring it up in conversation, but no one asks) because people kept asking if I was vegetarian (even though they don’t anymore). I try not to be mean when I point out that I do, in fact, eat meat.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that tonight I had an AHA! moment. I’ve been super-drained of energy lately, and I can’t figure out why. I blame too little sleep or too much sleep, too little exercise or too much activity, or even a lack of iron or B12. I’ve remedied all of these, and nothing really changes.

But tonight I read Rachel Wilkerson’s post about her new juicer. And when I read “The first time I did a cleanse, I had so much energy, I painted my apartment by myself,” a little light bulb came up above my head. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going out to buy a juicer (I’m a broke college student… I couldn’t if I wanted to). I’m not even really thinking of cleansing. I’m thinking revival. Food revival.

Just reading that one sentence made me remember how great I felt when I changed the way I ate two years ago. I felt great, was full of energy, cooked frequently and loved the way I saw food differently. I want that again.

I’ve considered vegetarianism, but I’m not sure. I do enjoy my poultry, and I really love seafood. And I also think it would mess up my homemade frozen meal recipes. But my roommate has been a vegetarian for nearly two months and it seems to be working for her. I’ve heard about Meatless Mondays and thought about it, but I’m not sure if that’s a big enough difference.

My life has been super busy the past few weeks. Both of my parents turned 50 within days of each other, school seems to have amped up, and I’ve been working toward internships. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave much room for my blog. The good news is that I have lots to talk (er–write) about.

The Big 5-0:

Both of my parents are now officially over the hill. My mom actually called people bragging about how she is “officially old.” It was great. My dad kept telling my sister and me that we didn’t have to remind him that it was his 50th birthday. Of course, we did. Their birthdays are a little more than a week apart. Their parties were exactly a week apart. You can imagine the chaos. My sister planned most of both (because every party I have ever planned has failed; obviously party planning is not for me). My mom’s party was a surprise, so my job was to distract her, which went really well. She had no idea that we were going to her birthday party until we walked into a room with nearly 50 of her friends and family members. She was in shock for hours. Oh, and did I mention her picture was on the cake. Yeah. It was awesome.

A decoration at Mom’s party hung where everyone could see it.

My dad knew about his party. My sister and I simply put all the little details in place (again, most of the planning was thanks to my talented sister). My job this time was to pick up food and some of the decorations. Since my dad is a huge football fan, we set up a tailgate-style party on our patio. We had streamers and football paraphernalia. It looked like an actual tailgate party.

This was our tailgate feast. The strawberries, champagne & shrimp cocktail were a delicious joke.

While both of these parties were amazing (seriously, I could go on and on about them), they were also exhausting. I am so partied out now.

School Hype:

School is in high gear for me. Part of the reason is because we’re in the second half of the semester. Things tend to get more fast-paced on campus as we near finals. But it’s about to get even faster because I’ll be taking an extra class next semester. I found out that if I do so, I can graduate a semester early. That is both exciting and terrifying. That means I have to work extra-hard for the internship(s) I want/need. So, with that said, I’ll try to get back in the habit of weekly posts.However, this may turn into a once-a-month blog (though I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I won’t have to resort to that).

Side Notes:

Remember that list of goals I made last month? Yeah… not going so well. Particularly getting back into the kitchen. Sometimes, I simply don’t have the time to prepare a full meal. But when I do have time, I want my roommates to be able to enjoy what I cook. Our conflicting schedules make it hard to eat together and easy to find a lack of motivation to cook. But tonight, my best friend and I cooked together (just like good ol’ times). On the menu: pizza! She made the sauce while I chopped meat and veggies. We made two pizzas. One was a meatless Mediterranean pizza, and the other was a meaty pizza. The Mediterranean pizza–which the bestie and I split–had the homemade sauce on a store-bought pizza crust (every time we try to make the crust, it turns out too thick) with mozzarella and feta cheeses, roma tomatoes, kalamata olives, peperocini peppers, and sauteed onions.

I had to eat the Mediterranean pizza with a fork.

The meaty pizza had the homemade sauce on a crust just like the other pizza, covered in mozzarella, then topped with turkey pepperoni, Canadian bacon and grilled chicken. This pizza was for my boyfriend and my sister, who seem to be mentally allergic to most vegetables. I was unable to get a picture of their plates for fear of having my had bitten off.

Anyway, that’s kind of what’s been going on with me since I kind of fell off the planet (or the blogosphere or whatever). It seriously has been an interesting few weeks.